Already a year had gone by since the last part of our project "Tour around Switzerland". As the coming stages were too long to do them in weekends, we planned a week long vacation for the next part from Höchst to Chiasso.

After what felt like an eternity (it wasn't even 5 hours), we reached Stuben at Arlberg, after 80km and 1160m ascent. The hotel had a phenomenal sauna area, the perfect spot for us to warm up again and relax. Dinner was nice and they took care of our extra need of carbs.

We woke up to sunshine - what a feeling! After a long breakfast we mastered the 400m ascent to the pass height. If I (Melanie) would say it was easy I wouldn't tell the truth. I still was tired from work last week during Basel Tattoo. Dominik didn't care to go slowly in recom mode, and actually pushed me the one or other time.

The descent was fun, via St. Anton and Landeck the track led up again towards the next pass: Reschen. After about 4 hours and around 80km (1055m ascent) we had reached our home for tonight, the Hotel Edelweiss. Same procedure as yesterday: Wash clothes, sauna, dinner, sleep. Oh, and I forgot to mention: Obligatory Russ (Weissbeer with Sprite) as part of the routine!

"Oh oh". That was our reaction when we woke up to rain again. Whatever, we had to continue, and the Reschen turned out to be an easy pass, never steep and with a good roll. After descending to Tartsch in Italy we had lunch at the Pizza world champion's restaurant Remo. Excellent pizza!

Next, the ascent to Stelvio pass. The second highest driveable pass height in the Alps. The infamous 47 hairpin bends (in fact it's 48), are situated in the upper part. We had planned to go today until we reach Trafoi, at 1565m above sea level. But this meant already an ascent of 700m from Prato in the valley. Had I mentioned that it was raining again?

And it rained. And we had to ascend. Starting at 1522m. At hairpin bend 22 we stopped at the only restaurant on the way up for personal doping: A double espresso, a minestrone, followed by an espresso.

After a total of 2 1/2 hours of ascent we had reached the pass height at 2757m above sea level. And in we go into the next best restaurant.

With this crazy part of our tour we are now part of the tough, no, the very tough road cyclers. Many can do pass heights. Less do Stelvio. And only the nutcases do Stelvio in rain. It was fun, believe it or not. And the good thing of rain: There is only a limited number of cars and motorbikes!

The strategy of waiting at the restaurant until we either were dry or the rain had stopped didn't work out. So we decided to put on every single piece of clothing we had and face the 1500m descent to Bormio. This was no fun. My lips were blue, I was shaking of cold and respect (to not say fear) of the curves going down. Eventually we made it to Bormio, where it actually had just stopped raining!

And now? Correct! Sauna, a beer (this time a local Stelvio brew), pizza and pasta.

It was already Thursday, our 5th day on the bike. It was still going down, and I was in Dominik's slipstream. He had planned a short stage for today to recover from Stelvio. We enjoyed a dry and sunny day and explored Sondrio, where we stayed at the Grand Hotel Della Posta.

The hotel was excellent. What we had not accounted for was the party that was going on on the piazza until very light at night. Sleep was hardly possible with the bar downstairs playing loud techno music. Bella Italia. We had only 110km ahead of us the next day.

After about 30km we had reached the northern end of Lago di Como. A thunderstorm made us look for refuge and we nearly gave up at this point. There is only so much rain you can stand. But the alternative was a complicated train journey to get back to Switzerland, and we would have to re-do part of this stage later on. So we opted for pushing on. "A bit of humidity" wasn't bad, was it? While it never really stopped raining and we stopped a couple of times for coffees and pizza we did finish what we had planned. After 5 hours and 113km we reached the boarder to Switzerland at Chiasso: